State Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), the Republican candidate for the special U.S. Senate election Tuesday, voted against a bill to provide financial assistance to 9/11 rescue workers who had volunteered to rush to the site of the twin towers after the terrorist attack in 2001. The measure, which was opposed by only two other legislators in addition to Brown, provided paid “leaves of absence for certain Red Cross employees participating in Red Cross emergencies.” Despite Brown’s efforts to kill the legislation, it passed along overwhelmingly bipartisan lines and is now helping to compensate Massachusetts Red Cross employees currently deploying to Haiti to provide emergency assistance after the devastating earthquake. Asked yesterday by ThinkProgress why he opposed the 2001 measure for rescue workers, Brown stated that he had his “own priorities first” at the time. As ThinkProgress reported, during the same period that Brown opposed the financial aid to 9/11 rescue workers, he sponsored a bill to provide a tax-subsidized bond to build a golf course in his district, and voted for across the board corporate tax subsidies.